My grandma used to always remind me," Normal is a setting on your dryer." It's amazing what can become your normal, how adaptable we really are when we choose to stop fighting our reality and learn to accept with as much grace as is possible our life as it is.
A year ago I would have never thought any of this would feel normal. I thought, if we were lucky, doctor's appointments every month would be daunting beyond what I could bear, ordering and keeping track of medical supplies would become tedious to the point of taxing, making any sort of plans would forever be beyond my reach, not having the promise of healing or certainty of a long future would do me in...I could go on and on. I thought the concept of having any sort of real peace would be a pipe dream for other people only. But, and I truly believe this with my whole being, we are not creatures made to suffer indefinitely. If you believe in evolution on any sort of level, life will show us time and again that no matter the circumstances, odds, or pressure, we will ultimately find a way to adapt and even thrive in our new environments. Perhaps for some of us that is more of a conscious decision than base survival instinct, but whatever your mode to get there, I think most of us do if we have and use the tools and support systems around us to get there, and I think finding peace and acceptance is the first place you have to start.
Gilda Radner coined it "delicious ambiguity" when she talked about learning to live with life's ups, downs, and unknowns. She could have left it at ambiguity, but she was careful to find a way to savor that word, to turn what is so terrifying to most of us into something to be relished and savored - a mystery to unfold rather than a dreaded unknown fate to be faced. Because that is what peace really is: stillness and acceptance amidst the raging waters and storms, tolerance in the face of trials, courage and joy despite every reason to fall into despair and fear.
We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, next month, or even five minutes from now; and it's easy to find peace on the beach or some distant far-off place where all the troubles are miles away. The challenge is to find it when you're in the thick of things, because that's where most of us are on a daily basis, more often than not. Just like reestablishing normal, peace can be had in the chaos and heartache of day-to-day life, you just have to find it.
So here are some of my daily mantras, quotes, and sayings that have helped to get me there, and I hope they'll help whoever is reading this and struggling to find their peace, joy, and new kind of normal again.
Be here now.
Just do the next thing.
"Perhaps this is the moment for which you've been created." - Esther 4:14
"Have courage, dear heart, for there is nothing to be afraid of and never has been." - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Just breathe
"For I know the plan I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." - Jeremiah 29:11
It is what it is
You are responsible for your own happiness
This too shall pass
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living:
"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying "This is the way; walk in it." -Isiah 30:31
"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, and stumble from defeat to defeat." -Ryszard Kapuscinski
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”― Gilda Radner
We are gonna get there, wherever there is.
"I can DO ALL things through Him who strengthens me." - Philippians 4:13
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